Anyone else get beaten by their first Fuzz Face build?

[skiraly017]

I gave it my best effort for almost four hours...could not get it to fuzz. Who would have thought something so simple could be so difficult. Back in the box for a rainy day.

[tcobretti]

Not quite a FF, but I was close:  I had a Tone Bender MkII on vero that I could never get to work.  Finally just gave up.  The only two pedals I have given up on are that one and a vero Mxr Phase 90.

BTW, since this is not a technical question, this thread should probly be in the lounge.  Sorry to be the lounge cop here, but it's important to keep the primarily technical forum pure.

[jlullo]

dude, my first Fuzz Face devastated me.  It's the only pedal i haven't gotten working, and i got so angry i just gutted the enclosure and used it for something else.  I couldn't bias the transistors! No matter which way i turned several trimpots, the voltage would stay the same!!

i've decided to make the axis face, and then start the Ge version after i've mastered Si.

[enigmur]

3rd time was a charm for me.

1st attempt - nothing
2nd attempt - worked sweet but terrible wiring layout, could not mount in enclosure
3rd attempt - Laid out and wired board according to enclosure, and its all go now.

I think first attempt you are never as careful as you could be - assuming the layout is fine

[GibsonGM]

You learn from all the screwups, though....all about how to wire neatly, what parts to put where, and in what orientation.  It sucks to make something that doesn't work!  But it's an important part in the education.  Have faith - stick with it, and you'll eventually get it working!  Next rainy day 

[Fret Wire]

Fuzz's can be especially problematic if it's your first build.

In addition to the normal mistakes of:
bad solder joints
incorrect component values
electro cap polarity reversal mistakes
incorrect wiring
improper switch wiring
improper jack wiring

You now add the following possible mistakes:
improper gain selection
leakage with Ge trannys
neg ground pnp fuzz's (doesn't always work, drives you insane debugging)
poor Ge selection (unless you buy from a reputable dealer)
oscillation with Si fuzz's
biasing - a lot of folks seem to have trouble with this
too many of the "boutique type mods without getting the basic ckt sounding right first.

So even if you've built some boosters and distortions without a problem, a fuzz can still give you a headache. I don't ever recommend one for a first build. Even if you're experienced, the fuzz has it's own set of peculiarities that almost makes it a separate build category.

For a first fuzz build, I'd keep it simple. Try the straight Dallas ckt before adding the "boutique" mods, get good Ge's from someone reputable, and still measure them for gain and leakage. If it doesn't fire up, debugging is the same as any other pedal: common sense, a DMM, audio probe, a magnifying glass, and RG's "What to do" thread.

BTW, since this is not a technical question, this thread should probably be in the lounge.  Sorry to be the lounge cop here, but it's important to keep the primarily technical forum pure.

No need for volunteer cops, it's a pedal building thread.

[darron]

that was my first build that worked. after a lot of work though.

first i did the tonepad layout, and forgot the jumpers. pretty frustrating. then once that was going it sounded horrible because i was using an unregulated power supply. weeks down the track i realised a battery worked great. at high gain i had the motorboating effect (negative ground :S ). this also happened more on the neck pickup. eventually i put a 1000uf capacitor on the lines as a workaround. so i think it took me a year... haha. now it's cool as.

[skiraly017]

Two things kind of burned me about this build.

1) I've built what I would consider to be way more complicated things without any issues.

2) I read, reread and read a third time all I could find about Fuzz Faces and building them. I studied for this more than I ever did for anything in high school and still bombed out.

I'm not ready to go into a debugging thread just yet, but the volume control and switching worked just fine. No shorts, touching pads or solder blobs. Q1 seemed to bias within acceptable ranges. Q2 was having issues. The fuzz control made little or no difference dependng on what transistors were dropped in the sockets. Once I got a brief "splat" but that was it. For the most part it sounded like a dark clean boost. Bummed about this one.

[jaydawg]

Man, I almost gave up for ever on pedals after my first try. I tried to buy all the parts at the rat shack. They only had a few of the parts I needed but the nice man working there told me how I could substitute these other parts and it would work fine. Well, you know how that worked out. It never worked and my wife never let me forget it.

A year or more pasted before I found out about Small Bear, got all the right parts and made a working pedal. I've moved on to tube amps now and look back at that first try as a real learning experience.

[runmikeyrun]

i agree.  I had a heck of a time even with the small bear kit because i couldn't figure out what resistor values to use, the schem or the ones that came with the SB kit (it was the latter) not to mention turning the trannies around backwards oops!  A Bazz Fuss would have been a much simpler first build.  Indeed it was my second!

[aron]

When I first started, I would always forget the 100K feedback resistor. That would make it not distort.

[8mileshigh]

I feel your pain, I've got at least 25 builds under my belt and managed to debug everything except my GGG PNP Ge fuzz Face.   When I go to my shop, I sometimes see it hanging on a nail on the wall and I make nasty faces at it.  I put hours and hours of work into it and never god a peep out of it !!!!  This doesn't mean I won't get it working one day though.  It will be two years that its been staring at me as I work on other stuff in my shop. 

Hmmm, maybe I'll look at this over the weekend if it rains.....hmmmm maybe not 

Chris

[Bucksears]

Yep, me too. I built it as neg-ground PNP, didn't make a peep of sound. Troubleshot everything, no dice. Drove me crazy since it has so few actual parts that it should be a slam-dunk.
Changed it to PNP-pos-ground, instantly worked like a charm.

I'm not much of a fuzz guy, but it sounds good; does a great overdrive too. I'm thinking of getting a separate Powerall for my Pos-ground effects.

- Buck

[David]

Way back when, I debated long and hard about building a Fuzz Face.  From the (deceptively) simple schematic, I thought "how hard can it be?"  I was smart enough to do a lot of research before I even breadboarded one.  I decided that there were too many variables.  I think I still feel that way.  If you want that sound and vibe, try the "Axis Face" or, even easier, try Gus Smalley's "Fuzz Face Type Fuzz" with the "Jimi Hendrix" mod.  This gives you the sound and feel you want with silicon transistors.  It's also easy to bias.  I'd still have mine if I hadn't done such a crappy job of wiring it.  It lasted one day.  I got so frustrated trying to debug it afterward that I wound up throwing it away.  Of course, that was before I could use an audio probe and an oscilloscope...

[solarplexus]

I gave up DIY for about 6 months once, and then 2 months again just because of a /$?"$/% fuzz face.  This time, when I decided to give DIY another try, I decided NOT to play with this circuit again because it's just too frustrating... then again... I was looking at my fuzz face yesterday and...

mmmmmm .... .... I shouldn't even look at it...

Matt

BTW, Si Fuzz Faces sounds awesome so don't waste your time on Ge Fuzz Face... just my 2 cents.

[R.G.]

In any contest, you are not beaten until you give up.

My first scratch-built effect was the Univox Super-Fuzz. I was 17, and I borrowed the pedal from the guy in the dorm room across the hall. This was back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, so I had no (a) scanners (b) digital cameras (c) photo retouching software (e) computers. In fact, the pocket calculator would hit the market two years LATER. I spent an entire night making sketches.

I returned the pedal and I don't think he ever noticed where I had to repair the wires... 

I promptly re-hacked the circuit layout, bought PCB stock, an etch pen, and ferric chloride. A few hours later I learned why one should not try to etch PCBs in aluminum baking trays. It turns out that the FeCl will eat all the way through and spill the FeCl all over the place.

Well, as I am always saying, education is always expensive. I didn't get my first chemistry course until the next semester.

But with a new bottle of FeCl and a plastic tray, I got a circuit board.

The EE shop didn't have drills below 1/16" inch. Well, that's OK, I probably could not have gotten all the wires into smaller holes. 

It took three months to accumulate the parts by a process of mail order, pestering radio-TV repair shops (which used to exist, even be common), and wheedling parts out of the lab instructors.

Fortunately I already had scars on my hands from learning to solder back in high school.

Unfortunately, I thought transistors all had the same pinout. Or, more properly, that all transistors just plugged into the holes the easiest way and worked. A couple of incredibly knowledgeable upperclass junior EEs took pity on me and told me about how transistors have not two, but three sexes, and the parts are all in different places. That was tough on a boy who grew up in a small rural town. 

But I did get all of the polarized caps right.

Except one. I copied it down wrong that first night. That one took a while to find and fix - about one year off and on.

You can see the process I followed - thud and blunder.

I got that pedal working a year after I graduated with an EE. I still have it.

YOU are still getting the benefit of that pedal, because when the internet finally happened, I determined to put up some short cuts for other people to follow.

And remember - if your pedal doesn't work, it doesn't work YET.

[jrem]

And thanks RG for the tech documents on that and other circuits.  I've built a couple on GE404's, I bought about 50 of them surplus, I don't think I would have ever gotten them working without your documentation.  I built the gain test jig per your recommendation (same with the phase 45 jfet tester).  And I breadboard the trannies before building them to make sure the sound is there.

Although I can say the gain of my different builds is all over the place, the transistor selection / bias is very touchy.  Another graduate from the school of hard knox . . .

[skiraly017]

A few hours later I learned why one should not try to etch PCBs in aluminum baking trays.

I feel much better that I know I am not the only one who tried to do this. 

[R.G.]

Yep. To this day, I hate to think of aluminum contacting FeCl.

Did I mention that I had the aluminum tray sitting on the cast-iron radiator in my dorm room?

[8mileshigh]

Changed it to PNP-pos-ground, instantly worked like a charm.


Buck,

Come to think of it, that's probably my problem cuz the battery heats up, if I remember correctly.

Chris